About Me

I live in Bedford, England. Having retired from teaching; I am now a research student at the University of Bedfordshire researching into Threshold Concepts in the context of A-level Physics.
I love reading! I enjoy in particular fiction (mostly great and classic fiction although I also enjoy whodunnits), biography, history and smart thinking.
I have also recently become a keen playgoer to London Fringe Theatre. I enjoy mostly classics and I read the playscripts and add those to the blog.
I am a member of Bedford Writers' Circle. See their website here:
http://bedford-writers.co.uk/
Follow me on twitter: @daja57

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

"Dodgers" by Bill Beverly

Four black teenagers from Los Angeles are sent by their gang leader to drive in a van to drive to Wisconsin to murder a Judge who is a forthcoming witness in a trial. One of them, the narrator East, is related to the gang leader. With him are his half brother Ty, a thirteen year old psychopath, fat Walter, a genius at forging id, and Michael, the nominal leader. East, who led a team of crackhouse lookouts till a police raid closed the house down, sleeps in an abandoned office building but pops home from time to time to look after his alcoholic mother. He finds the journey across the country a revelation.

These are bad boys, bred bad, brought up to badness, on a mission to kill. But they are still teenagers and their deprivations show at every moment. You can't help liking East and dreading the likely outcome of his criminal behaviour.

And then there are moments when the plot twists and you walk, unsuspecting, into an ambush.

Brilliantly plotted, with great characters, great dialogue and moments of lyricism. For example:

“Michael laughed almost every time he talked. It wasn't that he thought everything was funny; it was like his sentence wasn't finished yet without it.” (p 47)

“All East’s life the mountains had been a jagged base for the northern sky. ... He’d never seen them broken into what they were, single peaks dotted with plants scrub and rock litter, and the open distances between.” (p 66)

“Trying to press his gut out like a toothpaste tube.” (p 102) This is when East is sitting in the toilet, constipated. The physicality of this book is tremendously honest. When he is beaten up it hurts.

“Gym muscles down his belly like puppies in a litter.” (p 107)

“But do they get a signal out here? Negative bars.” (p 157)

“Flight, they called it. One part fear, one part the blindest excitement you’d ever known. It freed you from time, from who you were or the matter of what you’d done. You darted, like a fish away from a net, like a dog outrunning a dogcatcher.” (p 206)

“If there were such a thing as far enough, it wasn't a place you could walk to.” (p 249)

What to compare it to? It has won awards from crime and thriller writing but it isn't really in that genre. In some ways it is a novel about a troubled teenager growing up so it is a sort of Catcher in the Rye. The road trip reminded me of the road trip in John Green's Paper Towns. But the element of honesty about a boy trying to survive in a world with a different system of morality puts it into a class of its own.